


Coffee Maker

by meyari



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, One Shot, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meyari/pseuds/meyari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dreams and pain. Jason wakes from ghostly dreams to find the coffee machine is still working even though its owner isn't coming back ever again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee Maker

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't expect to write this but I just finished the first draft of a novel yesterday and didn't want to start something big today. So I started typing and Jason/Tim angst came out. Hope you enjoy!

Fingers drifted across Jason's cheek, stealthily gentle as they brushed hair away from his eyes. He swatted aimlessly. His hand didn't connect with anything but a low chuckle echoed through the room. Jason sighed and rolled so that his face wasn't exposed anymore.

The heavy patched blanket, careful stitches anchoring four layers of fabric together legacy of too many years on the street, slid down his shoulder. Cold didn't attack Jason's shoulder. His bandages covered the exposed flesh until those gentle fingers tugged the blanket back up again. Another ghostly touch dragged across Jason's cheek, down the side of his neck.

He grumbled, flicked at them, mumbled curses under his breath.

Sleep curled up around Jason with dark fuzzy limbs, wrapping itself around him and quietly purring until even the aimless drug-fogged thoughts he'd been left. Rain-fogged rooftops and distant thumps of explosions shattered and cartwheeled through his dreams. A black cape, red tunic, flitted around the edges of them, there until he turned to look and then gone into fractured buildings that burned silently, throwing off more smoke than fire.

Morning was pain, glass-shards dug into flesh sharp as the drug-fog faded into hazy awareness of antiseptic, blood and the scent of coffee. Jason cursed under his breath. Damned coffee maker. He should have thrown it out. There wasn't any need for the thing anymore.

Not now.

Not anymore.

He dragged the old blanket off, panting as broken ribs protested the effort of sitting up. Jason's sweats were gone. They should be by his feet, dropped on the floor before he finally gave into the drugs' insistent pull and pure exhaustion dragging him down. Dick must have come by, the fucking jerk. He kept calling, insisting that Jason had to come up to the Manor.

"As if," Jason grumbled. "Nothing up there for me."

The sweats weren't in the bedroom, not tumbled into the old soy sauce five gallon bucket that Jason used as a hamper. Also weren't on the floor in the bathroom. By the time Jason had emptied his blood-filled bladder, panting as his kidneys protested, his cursing had extended from Dick's obnoxious insistence on Jason visiting to Damian's bad attitude, Bruce's inability to communicate and the universe's fucking insistence on taking everything away from Jason.

Drops crept down Jason's cheeks as he slowly hobbled his way from the bathroom across the grungy, scratched wooden floor to his cracked orange linoleum clad kitchen. He had to keep one hand on the wall, the other around his ribs, as the room swam and lurched with every step.

The coffee maker's 'on' light blinked cheerfully. Jason glared at it. The coffee in the half-full pot slowly rocked side to side as if dancing that it was happy to see him. He blinked once, twice, questions finally working their way past the lingering drugs, pain and anger.

"The hell?" Jason asked, the words coming out mushy because of the bruise covering the entire side of his face. "Who drank some of the coffee?"

"It's my coffee maker. I think I get to drink as much as I want."

Jason whirled, chef's knife from the block leaping in his hand without thought. He whited out as his ribs screamed and the burns on his left arm reminded him that movement was bad. His knees gave out, dropping him to the cracked linoleum.

"Idiot," Tim huffed.

"Not here," Jason panted as he looked up from the ugly orange flowers to boot that couldn't ever be there again. The jeans were worn, frayed at the hem. Tim didn't even wear those flannel shirts anymore, especially not over one of Kon's cast off black shirts. "Not real, damn it."

"…You thought I died?" Tim asked. "It was close. For a while I thought you'd died, too."

He sat on the floor in front of Jason. This close he seemed so real. Jason could smell the expensive aftershave that Tim had started using once he began working at WI. There were scratches all over his face. His stupid hair was ragged on the right as if it had been scorched and then roughly chopped off.

"Your arm…" Jason whispered as the drops of water crept down his cheeks again.

"Broken," Tim said with one of his little shrugs that didn't disturb his mug of coffee at all. "That's why I wasn't out here days ago. Couldn't drive with my right arm broken."

He leaned back against the cheap pressboard cabinet, sipping the coffee and slowly shutting his eyes to smile as if God had smiled only on him. Something got stuck in Jason's throat, tangling with words that he couldn't articulate and the emotion he refused to acknowledge under the rage.

"Where are my fucking sweats?" Jason asked as he sat back against the opposite cabinets, careful not to put too much weight against the sagging door.

"Alfred took them to wash them," Tim said. His eyes were grey-blue, tired but amused. "I have a pair of Kon's that you can borrow. I think he took every piece of clothing you have other than the underwear you have on."

"Fuck," Jason groaned.

He scrubbed the dampness from his face, slowly, carefully shifting until his left leg brushed against Tim's hip. Tim was warm, solid, faintly damp from the ever-present sewer-scented fog outside this safe house. Real. He felt real. Seemed even more real as Tim used his elbow to rub Jason's shin so that he wouldn't have to put down the coffee mug.

"Explosion?" Jason asked.

"Took out half my cowl," Tim said, eyes sliding shut again as he sipped the coffee like it was ambrosia. He smiled vicious and cold as the assassin he refused to be despite all his training. "My ears are still ringing. But I made it through a basement window and then into a dumpster before the building collapsed. Took Kon to get me dug out. You were gone by then."

Laughter welled up, wild, hysterical. Jason swallowed it down, nodding. He'd heard Kon over the comms, heard everyone talking about explosions and collapses, fires and 'hurry'. Hadn't heard Tim. Not one word the entire time. Three days and there'd been not one peep.

"Comm?"

"Broken," Tim said. "And then I was out when you were up and you were up when I was out. Dick was supposed to tell you I was alive."

"Asshole," Jason grumbled.

"Still."

"I know," Jason sighed. His face was wet again. He scrubbed it off. "Food?"

Tim finally set down the mug of coffee. His fingers slid gently over Jason's shin, ruffling the hair before sliding around his ankle to grip tight enough that the bones creaked. Jason cracked his head back against the edge of the counter, breath shuddering as it struggled into his lungs. Tim squeezed harder.

"Cass will be here soon to pick us up," Tim murmured. His voice was rough, his cheeks damp, too.

"Better not hit me," Jason complained. 

He rolled onto his knees, lurched to the other side of his tiny galley kitchen and then pulled Tim into his arms. Everything screamed at him for it but Jason didn't let go. Tim's good arm curled around his waist, the nails digging into the small of Jason's back. New dampness bloomed on the bandage wrapped around Jason's shoulder.

"No guarantees," Tim mumbled. "Idiot."

"Jerk."

Tim's smile curled against Jason's neck. Jason wiped his tears into Tim's hair, smiling into the old, old burns on Tim's scalp. Something uncoiled inside his gut. The cabinet creaked behind them. Neither of them moved, content where they were for now.

The End


End file.
